Q: This tree at my apartment complex has beautiful pink blooms and yellow autumn leaves. Though I live in Tennessee, I am hoping you might know the tree’s identity. A man with the Tennessee State Forestry Dept. tried to convince me that it is a red maple, but did not succeed. This tree does not have maple seeds for one thing, and having grown up with maple trees in our yard, I am quite familiar with the maple family.

A: Despite your conviction otherwise, these are the flowers, leaves and bark of a red maple. There may be an explanation for the lack of seeds though. There are several seedless red maple hybrids, such as ‘Somerset’, ‘Sun Valley’, and ‘Jamestown’. Autumn Blaze maple, Acer x freemanii ‘Jeffersred’, is a seedless hybrid between silver maple, Acer saccharinum and red maple, Acer rubrum. Its leaves, though, are different from the ones I see in your photo.

Since you live in a commercially landscaped home I bet the original landscaping company planted a seedless tree to avoid the mess of seeded maples.

red maple flowers

red maple leaves